"FireWire has hardware to take over certain tasks, USB uses the CPU. This made a difference with older CPUs, but is no longer really relevant."
 
O.K., that explains it. I have an older Pentium 3 cpu on the Laptop. I was running a graphics program at the same time as chainer. The graphics program displayed my song notes and set list.
 
Forgive me if I smile when you say older CPUs. My first PC was an improvement over my Commodore 64, the Commodre had a sequential circuits add on card for midi. That first PC ran at less than 10 megahertz (XT).
I assume that a Pentium 3 CPU would be considered slow by today's standards.
 
Maybe for performance, I don't even need a new interface now. Just an Intel7 CPU motherboard and my trusty Saffire 6 USB will be smokin'...